


you know how nights like this begin

by questionsthemselves



Series: steer your way through the ruins [4]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Missing Scene, avoiding your problems with alcohol is TOTALLY better than dealing with them, except all the ways it's not, post-exile ficbit, this is basically just me being mopey and bitter all over the keyboard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-22 02:30:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13754376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/questionsthemselves/pseuds/questionsthemselves
Summary: His head pounds in rhythm with the low pulse of the music, but Stakar can’t turn it off. The same song, over and over, aching along on repeat. The melody twists in familiar lines, twining with the brassy twang of the bass. The muscles in the small of his back spasm and he shifts, leans forward on the edge of the bed and rests his head in his hands.Or, Aleta visits Stakar on the anniversary of Yondu's arrival, post-exile, otherwise known as a giant heap of unmitigated angst.





	you know how nights like this begin

**Author's Note:**

> I have no excuse. i'll fix it at some point?

His head pounds in rhythm with the low pulse of the music, but Stakar can’t turn it off. The same song, over and over, aching along on repeat. The melody twists in familiar lines, twining with the brassy twang of the bass.The muscles in the small of his back spasm and he shifts, leans forward on the edge of the bed and rests his head in his hands. 

The engine grease on his hands smears along his cheekbones, remnants of his obsessive tinkering, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters right now, except getting up enough energy to fish through the clutter in his bedside cabinet for the strongest bottle of alcohol he’s got. Maybe a stick of that good spiced K’mar incense he can light too, the one that gives off a little something extra with its smoke.It’d cover the stink wafting off the piled stacks of detritus and apathy he hasn’t cleaned up, blur the room hazy enough he doesn’t have to look at himself. 

Damn his resolution to give up huffer sticks. Right about now, he could really use one. Stakar opens his eyes, inhales. He futilely tries to will the alcohol to his hand, but it’s just as empty as before. Why couldn’t he have a more useful power, like telekinesis? Or matter creation? Fuck all this light manipulation. He be an even bigger hit at parties with that trick up his sleeve. Stakar pushes himself moodily down the bed, fumbles a hand into the depths of the cupboard. 

“Looking for a bottle of this?” 

Stakar startles, nearly sliding off the bed as his hand claps automatically to his blaster but –

W ait. He knows that voice. 

Stakar blinks bleary eyes toward the doorway.  Of course it’s Aleta. She’s got a bottle of that rotgut she likes to cook up in her free time in one hand, her hand hooked in the strap of her hodgepodge of a bag slung over the other. She isn’t much for frivolities, his Aleta, but that bag is one of them. Underneath it all it must be some soft of softer leather, but you can’t see it. A collection of metal bits and bobbles from all over the galaxy are glued or sewed onto it, a jangling collage of her history. Like a bunch of portable good luck charms. That’s probably where Yondu–

No. Not now. Stakar swallows, pats the bed next to him. 

“Decided t'swing by, share the good stuff, huh?” 

Aleta snorts, drops her bag to the ground. Her smoke-grey jacket slides off her shoulders, follows it down. It’s a civilian one, all the clothes she has on are – not a flame in sight. 

“It _is_ the date we sentenced him to death, after all” Aleta’s grin is almost macabre. “Might as well celebrate in style.” 

Stakar’s throat closes up, and for moment he can’t breathe. 

“Aw, don't be like that,” Aleta flicks him in the chest, then flicks the cap off her bottle. It goes nearly vertical as she tips it up, chugs a long swallow. “It’s not like we succeeded.” 

“‘Leta…” and Stakar wants to yell, wants to spit out everything they’ve roiled through a thousand times. The words crumble on his tongue though, those hollow words of Codes, and honor, and right-thing-to-do. He can’t change it, not even for her, and that she’ll never forget. His head pounds. 

“And stop with that shit,” Aleta slumps on the edge of the bed, sends her elbow back to jab carelessly into Stakar’s ribcage. “Breath.”

He sucks in a lungful of air, and holds out a hand desperately for the bottle. She never liked it when he did then, noticed it even when he didn't.

“Yeah, yeah,” Aleta takes one more gulp, then hands it over. “Brought a pack of huffer sticks too.”

“You know I’ve been trying to quit,” Stakar says, but there’s no refusal in his tone 

“You’ve tried to do a lot of things,” Aleta fishes around her pockets, pulls out a couples sticks and a lighter, “What’s one more?”

A hush falls heavy on the room, as the song fades out. The player whirrs, clicks, and then the first notes flutes out again mournfully. 

“Really?” Aleta clicks the lighter on, waits till the stick catches and then sucks in a lungful of smoke. “Couldn’t chose something more upbeat? Or at least a little less fucking depressing?”

The alchol burns in the best way as Stakar tips it down his throat. He lets it settle, then smiles humorlessly and hands the bottle back.

“You remember that night, when we brought him home?”

Aleta snorts. “Do I.” 

She drains the bottle down to its last quarter, plunks it against the headboard. The way they're going she probably should have brought two bottles, but then there's always Stakar's stash. Smoke and drink are winding heavy and dulling in his bones, and he swings his legs up onto the bed, collapse down.

“Feral little thing,” Aleta’s voice is fond, “Clinging to me one moment, then trying to chew my arm off the next.”

She slumps back, lets her head thwack painfully onto Stakar’s abdomen. Her hair tickles his chest, limp, stiff and greasy, bits of metal filament caught up all in it. Stakar wants to run his hands through it, pick her hair clean. She used to let him wash it, on the rare occasion she consented to a bath. It wasn’t without a generous amount of eye rolling and sniping, because stars help him Aleta never changes, but she would.  He’d loved that, washing her hair. Massaging her scalp, working all the tangles out section by section until it fell in shining sheets around her exasperated face. Braiding it into loops and buns until she complained and made him take it all out. 

Aleta sucks in another lungful, blows it out. It drifts down over them, clings to their faces, their chests.

“Then once we got him on the ship he wouldn’t get out of that vent for love or money, and nothing you said could convince him otherwise.”

“He was so skinny,” Stakar chokes out a laugh. “I couldn’t believe he’d even managed to wedge himself in there.”

Aleta rolls, crushing over his ribs as she fumbles for the bottle again. 

“Suppose he was used to it, cramming into those Kree transport crates,” she digs an elbow into Stakar’s chest to prop herself up, watches the light bounce off the glass. “You seen ‘em right? Stacked up in those cargo bays?”

Stakar’s eyes squeeze shut. 

“oh god, ‘leta, those cages,” he stills sees them so starkly vivid in his head. “And he was so young too, he was just a _kid.”_

Aleta upends the bottle, lets the last of it drain down her throat. 

“Twenty isn’t exactly an infant,” she reaches as far over the edge of the bed as she can get without sitting up, lets the empty jug clatter to the floor. “And I still think that’s how old he was, y’know I’ve always been better at translating that chicken scratch than you.”

Just because the Kree were still stubborn enough then to use that stupid code script instead of a nice, simple, scannable chip. Stakar shifts, says, “You know Centaurians age slower, even with the malnutrition he was probably barely out of puberty.”

Aleta tenses and fuck. No point in bringing that up. There’s so many regrets now, that they probably should have left Yondu with someone better equipped to help him and not surrounded him with a bunch of coarse-mouthed stone-brained space pirates is a distant wistful note.

The notes from the stereo swells and dips in the space between them. Stakar licks his lips, says, “Y’know, ’s lucky Martinex had the idea to use music. Even the damn roasted meat didn’t do the trick.”

“Hah,” Aleta slowly unclenches her muscles, curls her face into his chest. “He was too smart for a rookie trick like that to work, he didn’t know us from the Collector.” 

She starts to laugh but it catches ugly in her throat. “He’d never heard music like that. I think this always stayed his favorite.”

“‘Leta…” Stakar says helplessly, finally gives and lets his hand slide into her hair. She stiffens at the feel of it, and her lips start to pull up in a snarl. Stakar freezes. Maybe he should have waited, shouldn’t have touched her. But then abruptly, she goes limp as a doll and… maybe. Maybe he can have this, at least, right now. 

Stakar cautiously starts to sooth at her scalp, careful not to pull at the knots and matts. He hates this, hates seeing her so lifeless. Aleta is brash, dark threat, bristling suspicion and greed. She paints arrogant victory across her lips, swipes battles across her cheeks. Seeing her like this, all but defeated… it’s wrong. 

“Don’t think this means anything, any of this,” Aleta wraps an arm around his waist, secure them together. “Don’t think this mean I forgive you.”

She breaths hot into his side, adds softer, “I’ll never forgive you.”

It isn’t news, but somehow it still hurts like the first time – blooming slowly worse like fingertips sliced open on a wicked-sharp knife. It hurts like only she can hurt him. 

The songs clicks over for the dozenth time, every bit of the barbed wire melody unspiralinglike brittle vines cracking and falling from a trellis. Huffer smoke fills his lungs as Stakar sucks at the last of it, until there’s nothing left to breathe in. The ceiling above him blurs, and he blinks hard, then again. 

“I know,” he says. 

"I know.” 

**Author's Note:**

> comments cheer the writer up, you don't want me to write more angst do you? Exactly


End file.
